Remnants vs. The CB XI

This week there's been a sense that the season has
entered its concluding phase,
with eight-ball overs once again becoming fashionable
and a succession of return matches against our regular opposition.
Today we had a chance to get our revenge against
The CB XI, having
suffered
a dramatic, intense, heated, and somewhat
frustrating loss to them during our mid-June slump.
It was the first time they'd ever beaten us but,
despite it being a tight game in which the final margin was just 14 runs,
it was probably the least exciting of our half dozen encounters -
the combination of enterprising cricket and a friendly but genuine rivalry
has tended to give even
the most one-sided of encounters
a bit of a spark.

The CB XI batted first today,
and we managed to restrict them in much the same way
we did The Computer Lab
the previous evening.
After 10 (eight-ball) overs they'd scored just 69 runs,
thanks largely to the efforts of
Faruk Kara (0/13 in his now customary role as opening off-spinner),
Colin Anderson (1/12 in his first spell)
and
Sam Dolan (1/23, despite having a couple of sitters dropped off his bowling).
And even if our catching was again, er, "inconsistent",
we did take a few good 'uns,
John Young standing firm in the face of a well-hit drive
and Chris McNeill taking one second grab in the out-field
(the first grab having been off an identical shot an over earlier).
The ground fielding started off well, with
Pete Warner, John Gull, Mike Sneyd and Geoff Hales making
what one of the opposition later referred to as "a ring of steel"
(every proctologist's nightmare, one imagines)
and then, again following yesterday's pattern,
it all fell apart in the final five overs.
When the batsmen went up a couple of gears in both the hitting and
running departments, our fielding
ended up in neutral or even reverse -
suddenly there seemed to be misfields and overthrows more often than not.

Colin Anderson, on a hat-trick,
starts his run up.
(Note the presence of a bored-looking slip fielder to the right of the
wicket-keeper.)

In the middle of all this mayhem Colin Anderson came back on
and, totally against the run of play,
took only the club's
third ever hat trick
(which, combined with his first spell,
made for a sequence of four wickets in seven balls -
W . 1 1 W W W, since you asked).
After he bowled two batsmen off consecutive balls you might have
thought we'd have crowded 'round the bat or something;
but, the insertion of a single slip aside,
there wasn't much more than a half-hearted inward shuffle.
This tactic proved to be inspired, however,
when the hat trick ball was wide and
the new batsman had a big swish,
edging it straight to said slip.
Colin was thus clapped from the ground
with the season's third best figures
(4/16, since you keep demanding this information),
although hopefully some of the applause was also directed at
the remaining CB XI opener,
who had quietly carried his bat to be undefeated on 52*.

Colin Anderson, post-hat-trick, auditions for The Simpsons.

John Gull, Daniel Mortlock, Sally Hales, Pete Warner, Sam Dolan
and John Young lounge about safe in the knowledge that it would
be a doddle chasing down The CB XI's sub-par total.

All the excitement had come towards the end of the innings
was a little misleading, though, as it was our
early dominace that was critical to the fact that
we needed less than a run a ball.
Nick Clarke seemed determined to get them all
himself, blasting his way to 27 off 22 balls,
and when he smashed another off drive it seemed his seventh boundary
was just a second or two away . . .
until the mid-off fielder leapt off the ground and got his hand to the ball,
first parrying it up in the air and then keeping his composure
to complete the catch with some style.
Aside from ending Nick's threatening innings, this
also revealed our fantasy of an easy chase to be just that: a fantasy.
What we hadn't reckoned on was
The CB XI's seemingly endless supply of
out-swing merchants who beat - or nicked - the edges
of our bats repeatedly.

Trivia question:
how many runs did these two
(John Gull and Mike Sneyd) score today?

Not good.

After 8 overs The CB XI had reduced us to 61/7 and, presumably,
they were the ones now
licking their lips at the thought of
a comfortable victory.
Given that no total under 120 has been defended successfully
in any of our games this season it would also have been a
decidedly memorable one,
and it was only due to the small target that there was any
life left in the game at all.
Despite our collapse, we still needed less than a run a ball,
so there was still a hope of victory if we
could eliminate the usual risky 20-over shots and,
let's be honest, get a bit of luck.
And that's exactly what
Daniel Mortlock (42* off 32 balls) and Sam Dolan (11 off 16 balls)
did, quickly eschewing aerial slogs (after a few near escapes)
and instead keeping the scoreboard ticking over mainly
through aggressive running
- and grateful acceptance of some 17 wides.
The only real glitch in their partnership was when the
total displayed on the scoreboard went down at the end of one
over.
By the time Daniel and Sam were separated with the score on 104,
we were probably favourites again,
even if last man Pete Warner appeared pretty keen not to be called upon.

A couple of boundaries
left us needing
just 2 runs off two overs,
at which point
Geoff Hales took strike for the first time all year;
and then two balls later he was striding from the ground having
hit the winning runs with a nice dab through third man.
(Not that Geoff did the actual running, mind -
in a nicely poetic touch
Sam had stayed on as his runner,
thus getting to complete the
rescue mission he and Daniel had
begun half an hour earlier.)

Once again our fixture against The CB XI had lived up to
unreasonable expectations,
a Test match worth's of ebb and flow having been squeezed into
just three hours.
It was also our fourth win in a row,
meaning we're 8-9 on evening games for the season
(and have even achieved parity if you count the "hit and giggle"
of the six-a-side tournament).